Lured by the Sirens' Cry

I promised Lynn and his mom I’d keep talking to him. I don’t feel strange about that. I don’t even feel strange about the voices in my head. You can call me crazy. And you’d be right. And no one more than John Goham would appreciate the notion that you think I’m crazy.

His prayer card rests at my side. It leans against the spines of a stack of books I keep on a table next to my easy chair. I look at his picture and remember the time when, as a kid, John stood up too fast and smacked his head off a chandelier in my parents’ kitchen. All the light shades seemed to float to the ground, yet we couldn’t save any of them before they smashed on the floor.

He didn’t mean to do it. He agonized over the mishap until the next day when I told him how my mother reacted. She said, “That’s okay. I wanted new ones anyway.”

I look at his picture and cry sometimes. I wonder if the sorrow will ever stop.

Probably not. Even though at my age nothing surprises me. And at my age, I may not have enough time left to get over the fact that I’ll never see John again.

I had to take a road trip by myself one weekend right after he died. The prospect of loneliness on the highway seeped over me, as if someone cracked an imaginary egg on top of my head. I grabbed his prayer card and set it in my satchel.

 I said, “C’mon, Mr. Goham. We’re goin’ for a ride.”

I should have known he’d mess with me. I think he’s unsettled about one thing between me and him. And maybe a couple others. I’ll always wonder about that. And blame myself a little.

Halfway across Route 80 westbound to Pittsburgh, I appreciated my old Jeep. I patted it on the dashboard, like a good dog. I never had a major mechanical problem through 85,000 miles. Three minutes later, a bell clanged. The Jeep’s temperature gauge spiked.

I eased the vehicle to a rest stop. I called a tow truck.

The driver called me five times in the three hours it took him to arrive. I just wanted him to get me out of there. Get me to a garage and get me on my way.

Over the phone, something seemed familiar about the driver’s persona. I couldn’t tie it to someone I knew. He felt more like a type. The type of dude me and John had partied around for almost fifty years. The type who, after the party ended, would make John look at me and say, “Mingya, Trace. I didn’t think that guy’d ever shut up.”

The driver jumped out of a worn flatbed without shoes on (in his stockin’ feet is what my mom would have said). I crawled into the passenger seat. My knees backed up to my chin when I had to rest my sneakers on a battery pack jammed in the footwell.

The more he talked, the more comfortable I felt. We talked about our kids. We talked about adventures. We talked about baseball. When we pulled up on his place in rural Montour County, my feelings shifted. My naivete, or perhaps my faith in human nature, had been tested often enough. I thought maybe this was a chop shop. Where the driver and his thin, tattooed and trucker-hatted assistant would hack up my SUV, and then me. It is Stephen King, somewhat ironically, who says we should watch less TV.

That thought about dismemberment quickly disappeared when I considered the ridiculousness of it. Then the tow-truck guy offered me a drink and some conversation. One of his friends on site that day owned horses, and we had a lot to talk about. Growing up around my uncle’s farm in Centermoreland, I fancied myself as a half-assed horseman.

No way could the car be repaired right then, my new friend said. I summoned Uber as it was late and a three-hour roundtrip for someone who might agree to fetch me. Uber drivers kept cancelling until one confirmed. I know who sent him my way.

The dark alongside Red Rock Mountain on Pennsylvania’s Route 118 between Williamsport and West Pittston doesn’t flinch at the driveway reflectors and the yellow bulbs of porch lights on houses set back a good distance from the shoulder. The blackness sits on that valley road like the haunches of a great bear fallen from the night sky.

The dark never scared John and me. One night forty-five years ago in Sullivan Park, we sat alone side-by-side on wooden bleachers and saw people in the weeds. People who weren’t there. We welcomed them.

A lot of our conversations in the dark more recently started off with John asking, “Couldja imagine if…”

I could imagine a lot. Just not me hauling around only a picture of him on a mountain ride I had to pay for.

I guess I could classify some other mountain rides as paid. Me and John had to throw in money for gas and quarts of Genessee in the old days. By the time I got from South Williamsport to West Pittston that night after my Jeep overheated, I wished I had several beers in between the pickup and the dropoff.

The Uber driver started off talking about normal stuff. Relationships. Kids. Dissatisfaction. Then he started on about the supernatural. Graveyards. Orbs. Exorcisms. He’d been convinced the boyfriend of his ex was a demon—and he—the Uber driver—was an earth angel destined to vanquish the boyfriend. Not only had he been sent from God, but he could also see things. Like people on the other side. He used the word “empath.”

About the time we got close enough to my home where I thought about bolting from the vehicle, even if it had been moving, he made two more statements.

“Your wife is a blonde lady.”

True.

“She is short.”

True again.

And then he made a third statement.

“I can see her and Blue.”

Our dog's name is Blue, and I never said anything about a dog. While he might have been talking about the T-shirt she was wearing, I didn't care. Something zinged through me, diagonally from the back left of my ribcage to the right front. Maybe my departed friend John decided to check in. And out again.

Did the driver search my name and find a picture of my family and our dog? He had enough time before I got in the car in Williamsport. But Uber drivers apparently don’t know your last name.

A few days later, I looked back on that bizarre day. I walked to the library. Not by myself, I guess. Fifty feet from my house, a large drone crashed to the ground, smashing on the street and missing my head by two feet. A pickup stopped and the driver asked if I was okay. I didn’t know how to answer. But yeah, I brought along John’s prayer card on my walk that day also.

I did promise John’s mom and his fiancée Lynn that I’d never stop carrying him around in my heart and on my person now and then. I mean to keep those promises.

Maybe these strange circumstances just fall under coincidence. But maybe not. Maybe it’s just a voice in my head I hope I’ll always hear. And make sure to welcome it.